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CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

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Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#31

Post by ses1984 »

downerending wrote: post #25
njharman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GUIs are a discoverability nightmare. I've always found --help (or help for tools breakin the "standard") and man pages massively more discoverable than any gui. There are two well known entry points "--help" and "man". There has been much convention standardization with operating system guis, still they have many, many possible entry points. not all programs use same ones, use in same way. And webapps/pages are comp…

Not to mention that GUI designers have a penchant for moving things around in the interface on every release. So even if you knew where that thing was, you don't necessary know now . Consider Microsoft Office, for example. Ugh.

Maintaining backwards compatibility isn't a problem that's unique to GUIs.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#32

Post by bulletsvshumans »

njharman wrote: post #17
fermienrico wrote: post #3

The biggest problem with CLI is discoverability as the article points out. Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use. Furthermore, there are some commands that depend on the others being there - that breaks the composability. Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable"? Reading the man page doesn…

GUIs are a discoverability nightmare. I've always found --help (or help for tools breakin the "standard") and man pages massively more discoverable than any gui. There are two well known entry points "--help" and "man". There has been much convention standardization with operating system guis, still they have many, many possible entry points. not all programs use same ones, use in same way. And webapps/pages are comp…

In some ways CLIs are great for discoverability, because they force everything into the familiar "list of commands" paradigm. GUIs can be either much better or much worse for discoverability, because the layout techniques that let GUIs surface important or contextually relevant functions are the same techniques that let GUIs hide the function you need behind six layers of B.S.

See this article (full disclosure: written by me) that talks a bit more about some of the tradeoffs between CLIs and GUIs from a UX perspective: https://medium.com/design-ibm/real-developers-dont-use-uis-d...

There's also this interesting project that attempts to bring some of the discoverability and other benefits of graphical UIs to CLIs: https://github.com/IBM/kui . Would love to see more work in this area.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#33

Post by kondu »

njharman wrote: post #17
fermienrico wrote: post #3

The biggest problem with CLI is discoverability as the article points out. Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use. Furthermore, there are some commands that depend on the others being there - that breaks the composability. Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable"? Reading the man page doesn…

GUIs are a discoverability nightmare. I've always found --help (or help for tools breakin the "standard") and man pages massively more discoverable than any gui. There are two well known entry points "--help" and "man". There has been much convention standardization with operating system guis, still they have many, many possible entry points. not all programs use same ones, use in same way. And webapps/pages are comp…

Yep. CLIs often also have a predictable interface. (Help is almost always -h or --help, version info is -v or --version, etc). On a GUI you'll have to play around a bit more and search for functionality.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#34

Post by pritambaral »

nerdponx wrote: post #27
fermienrico wrote: post #3

The biggest problem with CLI is discoverability as the article points out. Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use. Furthermore, there are some commands that depend on the others being there - that breaks the composability. Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable"? Reading the man page doesn…

is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable" I've thought about this a lot. The answer, I think, is to have a "reverse index" of tasks that you can do with the tool and their corresponding commands or recipes. For example, man pages are typically organized alphabetically by option or subcommand. I'm envisioning a section of documentation - maybe a separate man page or just something on a website - that looks like t…

Isn't that just the EXAMPLES section of a man page?

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#35

Post by crazygringo »

njharman wrote: post #17
fermienrico wrote: post #3

The biggest problem with CLI is discoverability as the article points out. Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use. Furthermore, there are some commands that depend on the others being there - that breaks the composability. Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable"? Reading the man page doesn…

GUIs are a discoverability nightmare. I've always found --help (or help for tools breakin the "standard") and man pages massively more discoverable than any gui. There are two well known entry points "--help" and "man". There has been much convention standardization with operating system guis, still they have many, many possible entry points. not all programs use same ones, use in same way. And webapps/pages are comp…

> GUIs are deeply nested. And context sensitive so it may not even be possible to see actions until certain condition is met.

This is a feature, not a bug.

For me, browsing 20 pages of --help or man is a discoverability nightmare. I don't want to wade through arcane option after arcane argument.

The GUI gives me a well-organized top-level understanding of the program: organized menus, and organized panes (panels/palettes/tabs/etc.). Then I can drill deeper into dialog boxes and tool settings as needed.

It's far more efficient to quickly browse a GUI to figure out the lay of the land, than it is to wade through what is essentially the reference manual of a CLI tool.

Reference manuals are the opposite of discoverability.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#36

Post by downerending »

ses1984 wrote: post #31
downerending wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that GUI designers have a penchant for moving things around in the interface on every release. So even if you knew where that thing was, you don't necessary know now . Consider Microsoft Office, for example. Ugh.

Maintaining backwards compatibility isn't a problem that's unique to GUIs.

At least in Unix/Linux, I doubt the reshuffling of command flags and arguments is more than one percent of what happens in GUI programs. And it's probably far less.

Command-line people take backward compatibility very seriously. GUI designers seem to think it doesn't matter, because oh, everything's so easy to find. Fie on that.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#37

Post by sedatk »

pritambaral wrote: post #34
nerdponx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable" I've thought about this a lot. The answer, I think, is to have a "reverse index" of tasks that you can do with the tool and their corresponding commands or recipes. For example, man pages are typically organized alphabetically by option or subcommand. I'm envisioning a section of documentation - maybe a separate man page or just something on a website - that looks like t…

Isn't that just the EXAMPLES section of a man page?

Yes but not all CLI tools have it, or have it extensive enough.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#38

Post by cma »

crazygringo wrote: post #35
njharman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GUIs are a discoverability nightmare. I've always found --help (or help for tools breakin the "standard") and man pages massively more discoverable than any gui. There are two well known entry points "--help" and "man". There has been much convention standardization with operating system guis, still they have many, many possible entry points. not all programs use same ones, use in same way. And webapps/pages are comp…

> GUIs are deeply nested. And context sensitive so it may not even be possible to see actions until certain condition is met. This is a feature, not a bug. For me, browsing 20 pages of --help or man is a discoverability nightmare. I don't want to wade through arcane option after arcane argument. The GUI gives me a well-organized top-level understanding of the program: organized menus, and organized panes (panels/pale…

I rarely wade through it and just search for what I'm looking for. Typing '-i' (in the session, not as a param) will make the search case insensitive if using 'less'.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#39

Post by cuddlybacon »

crazygringo wrote: post #35
njharman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GUIs are a discoverability nightmare. I've always found --help (or help for tools breakin the "standard") and man pages massively more discoverable than any gui. There are two well known entry points "--help" and "man". There has been much convention standardization with operating system guis, still they have many, many possible entry points. not all programs use same ones, use in same way. And webapps/pages are comp…

> GUIs are deeply nested. And context sensitive so it may not even be possible to see actions until certain condition is met. This is a feature, not a bug. For me, browsing 20 pages of --help or man is a discoverability nightmare. I don't want to wade through arcane option after arcane argument. The GUI gives me a well-organized top-level understanding of the program: organized menus, and organized panes (panels/pale…

> This is a feature, not a bug.

Seconded.

The hard part of CLIs is discovering what is possible in the current context. You can almost take for granted that a GUI will do this for you. CLI not only won't, but will often fail to discuss this in the man page.

While there are exceptions (eg tmux), I find most man pages are written for someone who already knows how the command works but forgot a particular detail.

Re: CLIs are reified UIs (2017)

#40

Post by IanCal »

njharman wrote: post #17
fermienrico wrote: post #3

The biggest problem with CLI is discoverability as the article points out. Looking at Docker CLI, there are like a bazillion commands and it takes forever to read through the docs to find out what exactly to use. Furthermore, there are some commands that depend on the others being there - that breaks the composability. Back to discoverability, is there a way to make CLI "more discoverable"? Reading the man page doesn…

GUIs are a discoverability nightmare. I've always found --help (or help for tools breakin the "standard") and man pages massively more discoverable than any gui. There are two well known entry points "--help" and "man". There has been much convention standardization with operating system guis, still they have many, many possible entry points. not all programs use same ones, use in same way. And webapps/pages are comp…

> all at once. That is definition of discoverable! One action, i've discovered everything.

We should make information more discoverable by putting libraries on a single scroll, then it's just one single page.

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